Fortran: Variables changing on their own - fortran

Question

I'm having a problem of variables getting over-written for I don't know what reason. I've posted a chunk of the code below so you can see how things are declared. The variables strain,Qi,Qf,Qd,tel and Gc are passed into the subroutine and used to calculate ssgrad,strn0,strss0.
My problem is that tel and Gc are passed into the subroutine OK but are for some reason change value during this chunk of code.
Using print statements I've found that the problem first occurs during the 2nd do loop. When I set strss0 to 0, Gc and tel change value from both being equal to 1, to seemingly random numbers: tel=11.52822 Gc=-8.789086 (Just shown for the sake of example)
Each time I run the code they are set to the same values though.
Just to let you know, this subroutine interfaces with a commercial finite element package.
Many thanks in advance for any help with this
subroutine initcalcs(strain,Qi,Qf,Qd,tel,Gc,ssgrad,strn0,strss0)
implicit none
integer :: i,j
real*8:: nstrn0,nstrs0,strn0,strnf,varsq,normvar,lmbda0,lmbdaf,
# ssgrad,t0,tt,tel,nstrnf,nstrsf,Gc
real*8, dimension(3) :: strain,stran0,stranf,strss0,strssf,var
real*8, dimension(3,3) :: Qd,Qi,Qf
lmbda0=1.0d0
nstrn0=0.0d0
do i=1,3
stran0(i)=0.0d0
stran0(i)=strain(i)*lmbda0
nstrn0=nstrn0+stran0(i)**2
end do
nstrn0=dsqrt(nstrn0)
do i=1,3
strss0(i)=0.0d0
end do

Answer 1

In Fortran, there are two common causes of the corruption of memory values. One is a subscript error, where you assign to an array element using an incorrect subscript value. This writes to a memory location outside of the array. The other is a disagreement between the arguments in the call to a procedure (subroutine or function) and the dummy arguments of the procedure. Either can cause problems to appear at source code locations different from the actual cause. Suggestions: inspect your code for these problems. Turn on stringent warning and error checking options of your compiler. The use of Fortran >=90 and modules gives Fortran much better ability to automatically find argument consistency problems. You could monitor the memory locations with a debugger and see what it modifying it.

Answer 2

I concur with M. S. B.: turn on stringent warnings and error checking and verify the subroutine calls are passing arguments that have the same type and shape (array dimensions) as the subroutine expects.
The colons in the variable declaration syntax imply this is Fortran90 or later. If that's the case, I strongly suggest using the INTENT modifier to specify whether arguments are intended to be read-only.
For example, let's assume that of the arguments passed to this routine, strain, Qi, Qf, Qd, tel, and Gc are read-only input and the arguments are ssgrad, strn0, and strss0 are returned as output; that is, whatever value they have is overwritten by this routine.
The variable declarations for the arguments would change to:
real*8, dimension(3), intent(in) :: strain
real*8, dimension(3,3), intent(in) :: Qi, Qf, Qd
real*8, intent(in) :: tel, Gc
real*8, intent(out) :: strn0, ssgrad
real*8, dimension(3), intent(out) :: strss0
The INTENT keyword is an addition to Fortran 90 which allows the user to specify which arguments are read-only (INTENT(IN)), initialized but which may be modified within the routine (INTENT(INOUT)) and which are treated as uninitialized and will be set within the routine (INTENT(OUT)).
If INTENT is not specified, it is defaults to INOUT which is consistent with FORTRAN 77 (Note that there are minor differences between INTENT(INOUT) and INTENT not being specified but they aren't relevant in this example).
A good compiler will throw an error if a routine tries to assign a value to a variable declared INTENT(IN) and will at least throw a warning if a variable declared INTENT(OUT) doesn't get assigned a value.
If possible, set INTENT(IN) on all the variables which are supposed to be read-only. This may not be possible, depending on how those variables are passed to other routines. If INTENT isn't specified on arguments to routines called within this routine, it will default to INOUT. If you pass an INTENT(IN) variable as an INTENT(INOUT) argument, the compiler will throw an error. If this is happening in code you control, you have have to specify INTENT in a number of routines. This may or may not be desirable depending on whether you want to generally improve your code or just fix this one problem really quickly.
I'm assuming some of these variables are passed to external routines in the finite element package which I 'm guessing is linked to your code rather than compiled; I'm not sure how compile-time intent checking is handled in that case.